Poor medication adherence contributes to an estimated over $290 billion in unnecessary health care costs, 89,000 deaths and 2.4 million unnecessary hospitalizations per year for the over 150 million Americans with at least one chronic condition. Moreover, more than 50% of prescriptions are not completed correctly, and for long-term patients with complex regimens, adherence has been reported to be below 30%. (New England Healthcare Institute, Medication Adherence and Care Teams: A Call for Demonstration Projects, September 2010.)
There exist prior art devices for containing and dispensing solid medicinal pills and other solid dosage forms, however, they all have difficulties or drawbacks associated with them.
US 2009/0281657 to Gak et al. discloses a personal medication reminder and dispensing device having a programmable personal medicine container with an alarm for reminding a person to take or administer medicine in accordance with a medication regimen. In this patent the dispenser has stationary bulk pill containers which have to be filled manually from a pharmacy supplied container. Each bulk container has its own pill dispensing apparatus.
Additional prior art documents that describe medication dispensers include: US 2012055948, US2006097000, US 2003127463, US 2006180900 and US 2008300719, however, none of the above patent documents solve the problems associated with medication adherence in the inventive manner in which the present invention does.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to obviate the problems mentioned above and other associated problems by providing a controlled dosage form-dispensing system comprising both a personal and portable device, that may be programmed only by authorized persons, in order to dispense the correct number of dosage forms, such as pills at the desired time on the desired day, to accomplish these objectives. The term “personal” as used herein is intended to denote that the device is individualized to the specific user for his personal use, as will be most convenient and appropriate for the user, for example, at home or in a care center such as a hospital or health care facility.
Additionally, it is an object of the present invention to provide a controlled dosage form-dispensing system for containing and dispensing solid medicinal dosage forms, such as tablets, caplets, capsules and other solid forms in hospitals and nursing facilities as well as at home.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a controlled dosage form-dispensing system for containing and dispensing solid medicinal dosage forms, one or more at a time.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a controlled pill-dispensing system that is fully automated, thereby reducing errors in adhering to a medication regimen, and thereby avoid the dangers associated with such errors.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a controlled pill-dispensing system for containing and dispensing solid medicinal dosage forms that is easy and inexpensive to manufacture, and simple to use.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a lockable bulk chamber supplied by the pharmacy and receivable by the personal dispenser and openable only by the dispenser.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent as the description proceeds.